Empire Builder
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Great blue herons don't mate for life, but they do have elaborate courtship rituals that help pairs form strong bonds. Their mating displays include bill snapping, neck stretching, moaning calls, preening, circular flights, twig shaking, twig exchanging, crest raising and even bill duels. Scuffles over females are common, but never end in death. Once their complex dance is finished, the male and the female heron will have the strong bond necessary to raise their hatchlings together.
Source: Sciencing
Male Taveta Golden Weaver (Ploceus castaneiceps) aka Taveta weaver found on the African Savannah in Kenya and Tanzania. The male weaver builds the nest and the female choose their mates based on how impressed they are with the construction.
Seen the Africa Rocks Aviary, San Diego Zoo.
Conservation status: least concern
Another dormant pub. My local as well. Nice atmosphere, great beer and food plus a spacious garden at the rear. Soon I hope!!
A late-running Amtrak No. 8, the Empire Builder, cruises through Grizzly, Montana, on December 23, 1998. The train is leaving the snow-covered Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park behind on this extremely cold day. Leading the silvery Superliner is an all-GE consist, led by warbonnet-clad BNSF No. 761, with P40DCs (822, 808, 817) in three different paint schemes trailing.
After crossing a snowy Marias Pass, Amtrak’s eastbound Empire Builder curves through Grizzly, Montana, on a cold December 22, 1998.
The Phase-III 'Pepsi Can' and Operation Lifesaver P42s lead Amtrak's Empire Builder across the famous Two Medicine River bridge outside of East Glacier, Montana.
The previous day's eastbound Empire Builder rolled through about an hour ahead of this Christmas day scheduled eastbound Builder. Nothing special about this train other than it's Christmas day passengers traveling by rail, as it should be.
Amtrak Number 8
AMTK 165,19,154
Watertown, WI.
December 25, 2021
Another winter snowfall and brings another late Empire Builder on its trip back to Chicago. Siemens ALC-42 Chargers 302 and 310 are about 5 hours late into the Twin Cities and should arrive at St. Paul Union Deport within the half hour.
Full Youtube video at:
Expecting silver and blue to be leading the Empire Builder into Union Depot, instead, BNSF orange appeared into view making for an awkward-looking train. Anyone that knows me knows I am no fan of freight power on Amtrak. Oh well.
It's a gorgeous day upon the grassy knoll, as Amtrak's eastbound Empire Builder races along just east of their Columbus station stop, running only twenty minutes behind today.
Amtrak Number 8
AMTK 130,52
Columbus, WI.
June 4, 2021
…Taken at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall - clearly ‘Master’ builders back in those days! No CAD design either!!…..
For the interested I’m growing my Shutterstock catalogue daily here, now sold 14 images :- www.shutterstock.com/g/Alan+Foster?rid=223484589&utm_...
©Alan Foster.
©Alan Foster. All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.
The Empire Builder at MP 322, cruising along the Mississippi River at track speed on a beautiful day.
The previous day, Amtrak zipped through town missing the 5 car Seattle section of the train. That section (led by AMTK 307) smashed a tree west of Spokane and was towed back to Seattle and added to the next day's train. (307 was left behind)
Led by 3 differently painted Amtrak locomotives, an unusually big 14-car Empire Builder flies through town with temperatures just barely hitting +10.
Of course, in 2022, I would have much rather shot AMTK 301 ("Day 1") leading. But I feel like in several years when the GEs are gone or hard to find I'll feel differently about catching a bloody Genesis 45 leading.
Winds kept the Becker plant steam away from the sun but also chilled the bones stepping outside to get the shot.
AMTK 45
AMTK 301
AMTK 303
Years ago, before double track, there was a tree that blocked the billboard and was a better photo prop. Granted the billboard has changed recently, but I still miss the tree.
Before the IXONIA station sign disappeared, we find Amtrak's westbound Empire Builder racing through the small burg, while cutting through the hot, humid August air.
Amtrak 7
Ixonia, WI.
August 11, 2008
Builder's plate for an operational 0-4-0 Porter steam locomotive built in 1889.
Shot for Our Daily Challenge :“Plate”
Negoiating the sweeping curve coming into West Browning on a brutally cold day (the wind here is always a challenge).
Copyright© GlennDulay / Glenn Wesley A. Dulay
This image is protected under the Kingdom of Bahrain and International Copyright laws and may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without written permission.
• Camera: Canon EOS 40D + Canon 24-70 USM
• Manfrotto Tripod 190XPROB + 488RC2
• Standard Five [5] Bracketed Exposures [JPEG] + Photomatix + CS3
• Location: Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain
A little bit on Howard A. "Dutch" Darrin, the coachbuilder, designer and builder of the two Packard's on the left in the image above. Howard A. "Dutch" Darrin, the man behind the 1937-1942 Packard Darrin left an indelible imprint, not only on the automobile, but on the people he met in the old car movement, long after his career building and designing cars had ended. Dutch Darrin was a kind of "breakaway designer." He was crusty, hardbitten and had no reticence about expressing his opinions. He had flashing blue eyes, snowy white hair in later life, a bubbling enthusiasm for what he liked, a withering contempt for what he didn't. Interviewing and reporting on Dutch was a test of a writer's finesse: the art of balancing Darrin's fierce convictions with the opinions of others who sometimes saw matters in quite a different way.
He had an automotive curriculum vitae that put to shame most of his design contemporaries. Starting in the Teens as a Westinghouse engineer, he invented an electric gearshift for John North Willys, deciding then and there to spend his career on cars instead of electronics. When he went to France with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, he fell in love with Paris.
In 1920 he set himself up as a custom coachbuilder, initially using the Minerva chassis. He was shortly building custom bodies for the cream of European society, working on his own or in successful partnership with designer Tom Hibbard and, later, a banker named Fernandez.
His friends were people the rest of us have only read about: René Mathis of Ford-France, André Citröen, Louis Renault, the brothers Panhard, Ettore Bugatti, Sir John Siddeley, princes and potentates, presidents and polo players. To have associated with all these; to have had the incredible luck he always acknowledged; to have enjoyed a rich career, and to have had fun doing it, is surely what the philosopher meant when he talked about living life to the fullest.
In 1937, Darrin moved to California, transferring his activities from individual to semi-custom bodies, but maintaining a distinct style that branded them immediately as his own. Here he was aided by two experienced coachbuilders, Paul Erdos and Rudy Stoessel, the latter going on to found California's long-lived Coachcraft Inc. Typically, Darrin made do with little, buying a former bottling factory with a good location: Sunset Strip, Hollywood.
He styled himself "Darrin of Paris," and like Raymond Loewy he had an aristocratic French accent that he could turn on or off as the need arose. Dutch's clientele now included the New World's aristocracy, such as Errol Flynn, Constance Bennett, Clark Gable, Ann Sheridan, and Carole Lombard.
Innately talented, Dutch was always personally involved in the cars that bore his name: everything from his custom bodies of the 1920s and 1930s through his reskinned Rolls-Royce Silver Shadows in the 1970s. Unlike Raymond Loewy, he was not a stylist-become-marketing expert, who discovered and hired talented employees and took credit (as Loewy had a right to do) for what they produced. Dutch did it all -- even supervised the construction of semi-customs like the famous Packard Darrins. They might not have been paragons of craftsmanship, but by gosh they were unique, beautiful, and as dashing as all get-out.
Darrin's Packard connection stemmed from his decision to return to America from France in 1937. He realized that the age of full-custom bodies was waning, but thought the Hollywood film colony would buy rakish semi-customs. His concept, for which he deserves credit as a pioneer, was to customize production cars and produce semi-customs -- relatively inexpensive, yet distinct from mass-market stuff. Of Packard he said, "Its chassis was unimpeachable, and its classic grille was a great starting point." He had always fancied himself "a strong grille man," depending on the radiator to focus his designs, though his favorite American production car was the grilleless Cord 810/812, designed by a man Dutch considered a genius, the late Gordon Miller Buehrig.
The first 1937 Packard Darrin taught Dutch a great deal about his semi-custom concept. Built in a Los Angeles body and fender shop before Darrin moved into Sunset Strip, it was created for actor Dick Powell. The chassis was from a 1938 Eight (aka One Twenty) and the body looked splendid, with sweeping fenders and a low beltline displaying the characteristic "Darrin dip" at the doors. But Dutch had cut up a business coupe to build it, and chassis for closed cars weren't as rigid as those for open models. The car leaked like a sieve and had too much body flex.
Darrin built two more five-passenger Packard Darrins at another body shop before the move to Sunset Strip, selling one to Clark Gable. Like the first example, these had wooden cowls, which contributed most of the shake, rattle, and roll. Once "production" got rolling at Sunset Strip, clever Rudy Stoessel designed a cast aluminum cowl, which made a huge difference on the 16-18 Darrin Packards built in 1938-1939.
Among their buyers were Rosalind Russell, Chester Morris, and Al Jolson, who each paid a cool $4200-5200, probably equivalent to six figures in today's money. (That was peanuts compared to some of the esoteric specials the movie crowd was buying at the time, supporting Dutch's idea of relying heavily on production car components.) For some of these customers, Packard Darrins were simply too special. Dick Powell sold car number one after a few months because people were noticing, waving, and chasing him for autographs.
I can go on, but I think that's enough to give you a flavor of this great automobile designer and builder, Howard "Dutch" Darrin. Most of the above is from the auto editors of Consumer Guide
Foot on the pedal, never ever false metal
Engine running hotter than a boiling kettle
My job ain't a job, it's a damn good time
City to city, I'm running my rhymes
No sleep 'til Brooklyn
We’re looking out the door window on the rear sleeper of Amtrak’s eastbound Empire Builder moving through a siding over a frigid and barren eastern Montana landscape when the westbound Builder slams by heading into the setting sun on March 4, 1989.
A tardy Empire Builder is back up to speed on the straight track just west of Royalton as they are about to pass under the SOO Line Trail. For 1000 hrs on a Sunday, eastbound US10 sure was busy as hell. Seen here is a "break" in traffic.
I managed to get ahead of them at St. Cloud while they were making a station stop, but they caught back up to me by Big Lake. It was cute having the train chase me down.
Second build in my Iron Builder round against Caleb (Cheesie), with the Minecraft Trident in sand green as a seed part.
The seed part was used 10 times.
Stalagtite/stalagmite design by Thorsten Bonsch.
Amtrak 77 leads the Westbound Empire Builder through Duplainville. Note the recently installed quad gates. Pewaukee, WI
This photograph was selected for the 2017 Annual Curated Auction by The Light Factory, Center for Contemporary Photography in Charlotte, NC.
On a cold and clear Thanksgiving Day, Amtrak train No. 8, the Empire Builder, heads east across the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, leaving the jagged mountains of Glacier National Park in its rearview mirror.
Western U.S. wildfire smoke has a firm grip over the the Twin Cities this morning while the eastbound Empire Builder takes off down the Mississippi River after departing St. Paul Union Depot.
Five days after shooting this Empire Builder consist on August 5th, it is again making another round trip on the route from Chicago to the west coast on August 10th. Some strange dispatching delayed the Builder's route into the Minnesota Commercial and down the CP Merriam Park Subdivision to Union Depot.
It's around 3:15pm on June 11, 2021 on a sunny day, perfect for a different take on the Empire Builder as it navigates through Saint Paul down seven hours. Here it works through the Minnesota Commercial yard in the Midway neighborhood.
Not my greatest pan shot, but hey. A BNSF "fakebonnet", (who cares at this point, it's not a common livery anymore no matter how you slice it) C44-9W 744, leads Amtrak train 8, the eastbound 'Empire Builder', under the searchlights at A-3, Western Avenue, Chicago. The train was operating a bit over four hours behind schedule due to engine problems in Washington, (the BNSF leader was picked up in Spokane) and severe winter weather in North Dakota.
This Empire Builder left CHI with Charger 300 leading and this OLS unit trailing. Due to a malfunction, they were swapped out on the east side of Whitefish, Montana. Here, the train has finally made it into Whitefish depot and is doing it’s station work. I hope Amtrak purchased the extended warranty package on those Chargers?!